The 7 string variant of the Amazonian Wildfire humbucker set, description for which follows -
This is a set designed to replicate the flat, articulate, precise attack of great active pickups.
Being a fan of active pickups myself (in their correct applications), this became a personal project to create a passive pickup set to sound as close as possible to an active pickup set and have the feel and attack that passive pickups just don't have; making actives superior for lots of hard rock/metal applications.
Many people believe that a passive pickup simply cannot replicate an active - and that's true to some extent. A combination of the feel, resonant frequency and output of active pickups in a passive pickup package is impossible, but I think I've achieved two of the three with this set. I've backed off the output a little bit to get the upper mid range spike and flat, compressed response of the most popular active pickups along with the articulation that they're most known for. With modern amps having huge amounts of gain on tap, roaring distortion tones are easily attainable despite the slightly lower output.
To create these pickups I took a close look at the preamp section used by the most popular active pickups. I noticed that the majority of the 'active pickup tone' actually comes from passive component tone shaping, before the signal is boosted in the circuit. Naturally to achieve a similar tone, I had to incorporate a number of passive components into my design to replicate the effect they have in the active preamp. With a different pickup prior to the amplification stages of the preamp, this required a lot of experimentation to get correct.
Specifications (neck/bridge):
Magnet: ceramic/ceramic
Spacing: 58mm/58mm
Lead wire: 4 conductor + shield
Base plate: short legged brass
Wax potted